Yesterday I went on a tour of Specrtum Glass Manufacturer (http://www.spectrumglass.com/stained-glass/) with my friend Ramona. It's up in Woodinville, and they said they are the largest manufacturer of stained glass in North America! It was a really neat tour. First we saw hundreds of crates of glass, ready to ship. I can't imagine how much it was, although the guy kept spitting out numbers.
They have 4 main furnaces, and at least 2 of those furnaces have 4 smaller furnaces that can hold additional colors for mixes, and run 2 shifts a day, 7 days a week. One of the main furnaces does nothing but clear glass. They have about 450 products, which you can see on thier site. Then the other furnaces do different colors. They run through all the colors in about 3 months, then start making more. We saw where they mix the dry products in a huge drum that rotates. Then it goes into a furnace where it slowly melts. There is a robotic arm that ladels glass from the main furnace to a smaller furnace. Then it slowly extrudes. He showed us the big rollers they use for the textured glass. We saw clear seedy glass being made, and they do that by injecting tiny air bubbles in it. We also saw them mixing a 2-tone glass, amber and red (I love that color, and have some of it at home). One guy ladles in the red glass by hand to an amber base, and another man uses a hoe to swirl it around right before it's extruded. It goes down a long annealing tunnel, and at the other end it's ready to handle. They have 2 automatic glass cutters that trim off the edges (it's thicker), and then they cut the sheets to size with another big robotic arm. Then 2 guys look at each piece to see if it has any problems before packing it into the crates, or cutting it down to smaller sizes.
It was amazing. Tons of noise, glass breaking constantly, machines and furnaces running. There were lots of places where the fires/furnaces were exposed. They don't allow children under 12 to come to the tour, and I can see why. There was tons of glass shards on the ground, even though the main areas were swept, and I was afraid to touch anything. The guy giving us the tour was nice though, and answered all our questions. It only took about 1/2 an hour, but it was really interesting. I loved seeing my very own glass made! The only bummer was there is no gift shop, or any purchasing, and you can't take any pictures. I thought maybe they sold broken pieces or something, but no. It was still neat.
